The proposed twin towers on the site of the Downtown carpark building in Auckland.
The proposed twin towers on the site of the Downtown carpark building in Auckland.
OPINION
As the city decides on the future of the Downtown carpark building site, it’s worth looking at how we got here, and why this decision matters.
As deputy chairman of Auckland Council’s City Centre Advisory Panel, my role is to support the city centre to thrive, guided by thevisionary and widely supported City Centre Master Plan (CCMP).
The CCMP has unlocked major transformations like Te Ara I Whiti, the world-famous Pink Path; and Te Komititanga, the hugely successful square in front of Britomart Station. Now underway are Te Ha Noa, the Victoria St Linear Park, funded almost entirely from the City Centre Targeted Rate, and of course the City Rail Link.
The CCMP is designed to attract public and private investment by providing direction and certainty as the city reorients around the City Rail Link. Above all, it lays out a strong vision that complements these major projects: a streetscape shift from last century’s traffic priority to a more people-centred environment.
As successfully proved in cities around the world, this shift will accommodate new flows of people from the CRL stations while enhancing the city’s appeal as a place to be. Another key move is enhancing the decades-long policy of reorienting the city and its people towards the waterfront.
And this is where the old Downtown carpark building stands in the way.
Commercial Bay developer Precinct is proposing a multibillion-dollar investment on the site.
As featured in the Weekend Herald, the Commercial Bay developer Precinct is proposing what looks to be a multibillion-dollar investment on this site. The world-class architecture and amenity will add vitality, employment, new residents - and, vitally, more open and connected public space at street level.
Laneways through the site, open to all, will link Viaduct Harbour and Wynyard to the city centre and Britomart. This requires removing the grey lump of concrete that blocks the flow of people where the city meets our sparkling harbour.
Auckland Council is grappling with serious funding and debt issues, so any big move must be financially sustainable as well as uplifting. The good news is that selling this site will immediately bring in more than $100 million - and that’s just the beginning, because the development itself will add a high-value location to the ratepaying ledger.
Judging by the scale of the plans, rates are likely to be more than $9m a year, directly into the council’s coffers for benefit of the wider city. Add about $2m annually in the targeted rate for city centre improvements, plus $700,000 towards Heart of the City, and about $150,000 for the climate change targeted rate.
That’s about $12m every year - the equivalent of selling the site again each decade. High-value development like this can not only fund new plans, it helps keep the lights on in our libraries, the streets swept, and debt serviced. Moreover, construction itself will benefit the wider economy and many local businesses.
We will also gain from retiring a structure that urgently needs replacement or significant upgrades, and which does not financially contribute to the city’s development or attractiveness, let alone its own upkeep. Some claim the city centre’s vitality depends on the Downtown carpark. The evidence says otherwise. Downtown’s 1900 subsidised parking spaces are rarely if ever full, and at peak times there are almost 2000 vacant carparks within five minutes’ walk.
The Downtown carpark building has 1944 parking spaces. Photo / Dean Purcell
Others say Auckland is starved for parking, compared with other global cities. Yet our city centre has well over 50,000 parking spaces, compared with fewer than 40,000 in Melbourne and 30,000 in Sydney, both of which are much bigger and more vibrant.
Besides, nowhere in New Zealand has better public transport than downtown Auckland. Ferries, trains, and buses - the busway from the north, the new one just beginning from the northwest - deliver more than 40,000 people a day to the area, from every point of the compass.
Oversupplying publicly subsidised carparking is a hangover from last century, when the city centre was trying to compete head on with suburban malls just as quality public transport was being slashed. But that’s a losing game: a vibrant city centre can never out-compete suburban malls for easy and free parking.
Instead, a city wins by being better at what it is: a city. People will find ways to visit and keep returning, when the destination is uniquely exciting and rewarding. They will want to work there, and they will want to live there.
The millions who throng to central London, Paris, New York, or Sydney aren’t there because driving is easy and parking is free. Auckland can best compete by becoming better at what people want from a major city: more excitement, more opportunity, more life. This plan delivers all that - as well as providing immediate and ongoing funding for even more.
Patrick Reynolds is the deputy chairman of the City Centre Advisory Panel. His role is to advise the council, including the governing body, on issues in the city centre.
